Because all the other Republican politicians are either cowards, racist, or racist cowards.
Trump’s base like him and think that he is doing a good job. The politicians would lose their jobs if they took on Trump.
At that point I would imagine that I no longer believe in democracy, or even a republic (for the pedantic).
I think it’s pretty clear that the GOP doesn’t value democracy. Their strategy to win elections includes overt attempts to suppress Democrats from voting. If someone is still in the GOP, he believes in Trumpism, not democracy.
I believe that if you ask the typical GOP member if they believe in democracy, they will answer with a resounding Yes. And they believe they are telling the truth in saying that.
It’s just that they think they are fighting for the soul of the country, and if that means setting democracy aside for a while, they will do so. Once the country is back on what they think is the right track, they will reinstitute democracy. For sure. No lie. 100%.
The idea that they may never determine that the country is on their right track is something that they ignore.
TLDR: As is so common among humans, they believe that the end does indeed justify the means.
The impression I get is that Republicans believe they are actually enhancing and protecting democracy. If one believes, for instance, that people are abusing the lack of voter-ID laws to cast fraudulent votes, that dead people are voting, and that many illegal immigrants are voting illegally, then one is ***enhancing ***democracy by enforcing the rules and making sure that only legit voters get to cast legit votes.
Whether those aforementioned claims are true or not is another matter.
The claims don’t have to be true.
They just have to have an air of truthiness.
tip o the hat to Colbert
Silly question.
I’ll say this… If we were living in a parallel dimension where some sort of FDR-style Democrat is president, and he or she gave us Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, ended the drug war, ended our half dozen foreign wars, and broke up the Big Tech psychopaths destroying our civil society, I would forgive any immoral thing this hypothetical president would ever do. To paraphrase an imbecile, if they shot someone on 5th Avenue, I would still support them. They could use their office to enrich themselves and their families, and I would still support them, and enthusiasticly so.
Every president in my lifetime has had a literal kill list and blood on their hands. These are not fine, polite gentleman. Trump is abhorrent to a lot of people because he doesn’t mask his awfulness. The thing is- he also fights and gets shit done for his side. If all you care about is abortion, guns, and god, why in the world would you ever turn against Trump? He has done more for you than any other president. The courts are packed with wingnuts for a generation, and as a bonus you get to see your arch enemies, the libs, triggered on a daily basis. Trump voters are living in heaven right now. Who cares that he has used power to enrich himself or colluded with foreigners to bring down his adversaries (who you consider immoral baby killers anyway). He also use his power to give his base what they want, and that’s all that matters.
I don’t blame Republicans for sticking with their guy. In fact, it’s completely logical. They understand power and how to wield it. OTOH, what I do find pathetic is some Democrats’ delusion that this all just an abberation and surely we can all go back to a civil time of bipartisanship that never actually existed and all just get along. How sad. Republicans literally think Democrats murder babies, along with all sorts of evils. They are fed propoganda 24/7 by the highest-rated news network in America, alongside a burgeoning industry of even more radical Internet propoganda. These people hate you. Get over it and recalibrate so you can actually win elections against them, and then use the levers of power to punish them just like they do to you. They will never ever turn against their Party as long as it gives them what they want, and maybe there is a lesson to learn there.
This is one of the best write-ups on the issue, here or elsewhere. It would take an extraordinarily blind voter to vote against his or her political interests in the name of “personal character.” Yes, many Republicans are being flaming hypocrites by supporting Trump after having decried Bill Clinton’s behavior in the 1990s, but it makes no logical sense whatsoever to toss out 90% of what you like (whatever it is that you like) because of 10% that you don’t like.
Not to mention that there is a huge “emotional price” in doing so - if seeing “the other side” gloat and rejoice in your side losing feels like having a big chunk of salt rubbed into your wounds, you’ll go to almost any length to deny the other side that schadenfreude.
Trump is the left wing version of Trump. He has no political shape. No political fucks to give. No political beliefs. Just whatever vehocle he can crawl onto in order to ride it as far as it’ll take him before it runs out of gas.
Packing the courts is great for the party but it sure as hell is not what the base cares about. He’s done literally nothing for them other than talk. His one and only accomplishment fucks his base to enrich the elites.
Go to r/TheDonald or read through some Trump fans’ tweets on Twitter. You are in a bubble- these people are overjoyed with his performance. Roe vs Wade and Obamacare are close to dead, gun rights are untouchable for the next few decades, Christian supremacy is back in the halls of power, and uppity non-republicans have been put back in their place. What do you think the base cares about if not those things?
Your average Trump fan is not tech savvy enough to be on twitter and has never even heard of Reddit, both of those are full of either internet trolls or paid shills. Obamacare is actually popular, and nobody is actually happy with how Trump has dealt with the gun issue. The thing they care about, other than their own financial well being, is immigration. Putting kids in cages might be popular but its not what he promised.
If you can’t have a border wall, institutionalized cruelty at the border is the next best thing.
His approval numbers among Republicans hover around 90%. If Democrats want to handwave that away as some sort of Internet trolling conspiracy or just dumbasses not realizing they are being screwed over, then they really are on their way to losing once again.
An honest comparison to this would require that Trump had banned all abortions for any reason, stopped all immigration from brown countries and deported every single one living here, delegalized gay marriage and annulled all their marriage licenses, brought back every single coal mining job and revitalized every small town. You’re comparing the complete and total fulfillment of the literal perfect liberal agenda to Trump’s half assed rhetoric and vague feelings.
I think just below this attitude you describe is their not so subtle belief that when they say American democracy, they mean for white people. When they say Make America Great Again, they mean for whites like them, so they don’t see suppression of black votes as a problem, because blacks aren’t really Americans.
There’s a reason that “Profiles in Courage” was such a thin book. (Stole that line but not sure from whom. If anybody knows trot it out.)
Party politics in the USA are centered on the presidency. If you don’t like the Republican president, whoever that is, you probably aren’t a Republican voter any more.
My supervisor is a very smart guy, a conservative, and said basically that he and his wife can’t stand Trump but why would he care about the actual person in office if he is effective in pushing the conservative agenda.
While I kind of understand that line of thinking, I don’t think I’d give up the collective trust in our system to get universal health care, for instance. It’s just not worth it.
And then I think, what the hell is the equivalent for right-wingers on your paragraph above? Less taxes for the rich? Let private industry take over Medicare and Medicaid? Privatise social security? Mandate school prayer to Jesus? Allow us to shoot anyone trying to cross our border (from Mexico, not Canada) illegally?
It’s hard to imagine someone rising to the ranks of the US Senate that genuinely supports these ideas, so, at some point we lefties think there has to be some red line, some breaking point for them. But that isn’t happening and it’s baffling.
Is that a thing?